Life Cycle Assessment of Wood-Based Textile Products: Using a Flexible Parametric Model for Carbon Accounting

Beskrivning

This study aims to evaluate the environmental impact of dress products made from wood fibers using retrospective life cycle assessment (LCA). Our cradle-to-grave LCA applied attributional approaches that includes carbon balance analysis to understand the complete story of biogenic carbon removal and emissions in the life cycle of the product under investigation. The product system being developed represents average technology in the European region within 2010 to the present time. The life cycle inventory (LCI) for dress products was compiled from several sources, including scientific literature, national reports, and databases, to model processes in the downstream and upstream parts of the product life cycle. Focusing on developing LCI for forestry activities, we employed a flexible parametric model proposed in the literature involving the so-called CARBINE model to facilitate carbon sequestration accounting. We defined the functional unit as one meter square of dress products made from wood fibers produced in the European region. Six midpoint impact categories, consisting of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, cumulative energy demand, water use, and land use, were considered in our assessment using openLCA software. As for the results, we expect that the environmental impact of this particular textile product will vary considerably depending on the downstream modeling scenario, mainly due to variations in recycling schemes (and rates) and lifetime assumptions. To this end, our analysis focuses on exploring different scenarios in modeling the downstream stages of the product life cycle as part of the sensitivity analysis. We believe that the inclusion of a carbon balance approach in our study is critical since the product´s lifetime strongly determines how long biogenic carbon is retained in the product, and such an approach can reveal otherwise hidden information regarding the temporal aspects of the system under study. Our study can serve as a baseline that provides key environmental profiles for a viscose-dress product, taking the whole life cycle perspective while also considering biogenic carbon balance accounting.

Period	23 okt. 2024
Evenemangstitel	SETAC Europe 26th LCA Symposium
Typ av evenemang	Konferens
Plats	Gothenburg, SverigeVisa på karta
Omfattning	Internationell